Dispersive solid-phase extraction of polyphenols from juice and smoothie samples using hybrid mesostructured silica followed by ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography-ion-trap tandem mass spectrometry

Abstract

A wormhole-like mesostructured silica was synthesized and modified with octadecylsilane (C18) groups. The resulting hybrid material (HMS-C18) was characterized and evaluated as sorbent for simultaneous extraction of 20 polyphenols from mixed fruit-vegetables juices and smoothies by dispersive solid-phase extraction (dSPE). The samples were first subjected to solvent extraction followed by dSPE procedure. The extraction step was optimized and combined with a reversed-phase ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography method coupled to ion-trap tandem mass spectrometry (UHPLC-IT-MS/MS), which was also optimized. HMS-C18 showed high potential to extract and purify the target analytes, being more effective than commercial C18 amorphous silica. The proposed method was validated for both samples, obtaining average recoveries from 57-99% with relative standard deviations lower than 9%. Its applicability in the analysis of commercial mixed fruit-vegetables juices and smoothies revealed mainly contents of rutin, 4-hydroxybenzoic acid, chlorogenic acid, epicatechin, caffeic acid and naringin in the samples analyzed